


Girl Almighty

by kathillards



Series: girls like girls [11]
Category: Kamen Rider Build, 快盗戦隊ルパンレンジャー VS 警察戦隊パトレンジャー | Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patoranger
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thieves, Crossover, F/F, Rival Relationship, not really au in the case of the lupins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-20 09:11:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17619596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: "It's not about the endgame, Tsukasa. Sometimes it's just about the heist." (Detective Tsukasa has her work cut out for her with this thief.)





	Girl Almighty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiriya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiriya/gifts).



> wow i super don't know how to write heists but how could i resist a crossover ladies rivalmance.  
> ft. the lupins because i love them :)

The museum is, of course, spotless by the time she gets there.

“Do you want us to lock down the building, Detective?” asks one of the security guards. He’s big and burly and has one hand on the pistol strapped to his side, already gunning to take down the thief before they’ve even got a lock on them.

Tsukasa shakes her head. “There’s no point.”

She lifts a hand and traces the clear frame around the painting—ink on silk, colors sweeping into an elegant portrait of a ship at sea, restored from the Muromachi period, and valued for a lot more than her job was worth—and pulls out the paper left behind. It’s a ripped piece of newspaper, with cut-out letters forming a note, and it’s the only truly priceless thing in the museum right now, as far as she’s concerned.

_Too slow._

And on the other side:

_Next time, Detective._

She can practically _see_ the winky face at the end of it.

“But it looks unharmed,” protests one of her underlings, reaching for the painting with gloved hands. The security guard moves to stop her but Tsukasa slants him a glare and he stops. Her junior detective touches one edge of the painting—and immediately the colors start to run, bleeding down the silk and creating a cacophony of blue and red.

It is, in its own way, beautiful.

“She’s very talented in forgeries,” says Tsukasa dryly. She folds up the note and slides into her pocket. “Get me all the security footage you have,” she says to the guards. “And someone clean up the paint. This isn’t amateur hour.”

She turns to face her team and wishes, not for the first time, that she had Keiichiro or Noel or even Sakuya working this case with her. Still, this team of new recruits will have to do, because she’ll be damned if she’s letting one little art thief get away from her.

“We know what to do,” she says, and watches with satisfaction as her detectives snap to attention. “We’re going to catch the Paper Girl.”

 

 

 

“Still working?” asks Touma. It’s midnight, so she’s pretty sure his tone is less ‘concerned’ and more ‘please get out of my restaurant’ but Umika gave her permission to stay as long as she needed, so she doesn’t care about Touma’s moods.

“I can’t figure out how she did it,” Tsukasa mutters, tracing her pen over one of the many lines she’s scrawled over her map of the latest museum robbed by Paper Girl. “The cameras, the security, everything—it’s like she was invisible when she came in. Or could walk through walls.”

“Maybe she could,” suggests Kairi, looking up from his phone. Immediately, Touma glares at him and he quickly ducks his head back down so he won’t get roped into cleaning the tables along with Umika.

“People can’t just walk through walls,” Tsukasa sighs. She drops her head into her hands, feeling another piece of her sanity come unscrewed as she runs the heist over and over in her mind. The museum had top-notch security, the best in the country. Either the Paper Girl really was magical, or she had inside help. But they’d already interrogated every single security guard and any other personnel in the building.

“Hey,” says Umika gently, and she looks up to see her splaying one hand over the maps to cover up her all her notes. “I think you’re thinking yourself in circles. This heist is already over, she already got the painting. I guarantee she’s not still thinking about it. She’s planning her next move, so you need to meet her _there_.”

“And preferably not _here_ ,” Touma mutters, but everyone politely pretends they don’t hear him.

“I don’t _know_ her next move,” Tsukasa says, frustrated. “There’s three other major museums around Japan that she hasn’t hit yet—but there’s no telling when she might double back to one she’s already robbed. And there are art galleries and showings, not to mention private collectors… we’ve tried baiting her before, but she always shows up where we least expect her.”

“D’you think she might have a person inside the force?” Kairi asks, scooting his chair over to her table.

“Or perhaps the police are just very predictable,” Touma suggests, not without sarcasm.

Tsukasa frowns at him. “I had Keiichiro _and_ Sakuya investigate and interrogate my team. If any of them weren’t completely earnest about this, they would have been found out. Or scared off.”

“Yeah, Kei-chan’s pretty scary about justice,” Kairi agrees. He slides one of her maps over towards him and eyes it thoughtfully. “You know what you should do? Pull one of her heists yourself. See how she does it. Then you can get in her mindset.”

Tsukasa stares at him. “I don’t know how to pull a heist. I’m a cop, not a…”

She trails off, because both Kairi and Umika are looking at her with identical smirks on their faces. She can practically see Touma rolling his eyes behind her.

“Sounds like a case for the phantom thieves,” says Kairi smugly.

“Don’t worry,” Umika tells her in a stage whisper. “We won’t _actually_ rob anything.”

This doesn’t exactly fill her with confidence… but a plan is a plan. No matter how technically illegal it might be.

 

 

 

Noel shows up in a limousine to take her to an art gallery exhibit decked out in a sparkly silver suit that has her thinking she might actually be underdressed for the occasion.

“Thanks for doing this,” Tsukasa tells him, smoothing down her dress as they walk up to the glass doors of the gallery. “Are the others…?”

Noel puts a finger to his lips. “First rule of pulling a heist,” he says. “Trust your partners to be where they need to be.”

“Sorry, this is my first time breaking the law.”

He grins at her and presses a hand to his heart, pretending to sigh dreamily. “The first time is always the most special.”

Tsukasa elbows him in the side but he dodges to open the door for her and lead her into the private showing. Inside, the room is lit up from every angle, full of an impressive range of paintings from around the world, and crowded with people dressed in suits and dresses almost as sparkly as Noel’s.

“Fine art is such a wonderful thing to share with people, isn’t it?” Noel asks cheerily, looping her arm through his and diving right into the conversation of two ladies, both wearing feathered hats and very precious-looking brooches.

Her mind wanders as Noel chatters away with the ladies, wondering if the Paper Girl steals more than just art—if she just likes expensive things, like bird-shaped brooches or bejeweled hair pins. Time and time again, she’s run over potential motives for someone to steal art and leave notes behind—like she _wants_ Tsukasa to catch her—but she can’t come up with anything concrete aside from ‘she just likes doing it’.

She supposes some people do just like stealing. Maybe it’s the thrill of the heist? Tsukasa can’t deny that it had been exhilarating watching Kairi, Umika, and Touma put together a plan to fake-rob this art gallery, going over all their entrance and exit routes, showing her their collection of tools and gadgets to make the job easier. They were alarmingly good at covering all possible outcomes to every step of the plan.

And of course, there is her job: to stand here, look pretty, and help them make their escape. And if she’s lucky, maybe the Paper Girl will hit this spot tonight, too.

“I’m going to go get us some drinks,” she tells Noel once she’s had enough of hearing about nineteenth century art movements from his company. “Be right back.”

He squeezes her arm once and smiles. “Don’t get lost.” It’s teasing, but she knows he means that she has to be in position to turn off the lights when their heist is about to happen.

Tsukasa weaves her way through the crowd and ends up in a hallway just adjacent from the main room, where a table for refreshments had been set up. The waiters kept running around to take things on plates into the gallery, but other than them, the only person here was another woman, eating a tiny club sandwich at the table.

“Oh, sorry,” says the woman, laughing a little as she covers her mouth with a napkin when she notices Tsukasa standing there. “I didn’t mean to hog the sandwiches. Go ahead, they’re really good.”

“Thanks.” Tsukasa moves towards her, trying not to look suspicious as she studies the woman. Kairi had told her to take note of anyone she saw or interacted with tonight, both in case she ran into anyone suspicious and so that she was aware of every potential roadblock—someone who had nausea problems who might block the bathroom, or someone who specialized in eighteenth century impressionism and would be able to instantly tell a fake from a real.

This woman continues smiling cheerfully at her as Tsukasa takes one of the sandwiches and a glass of pink lemonade. She has short brown hair, falling around her face in gentle waves, and warm brown eyes, dressed in an elegant red and blue chiffon dress with a black blazer on top of it. Tsukasa’s gaze catches on her necklace—while every other part of this woman is classic and beautiful, the necklace with a bunny pendant looks a little out of place.

“I’m Tsukasa,” she says to start a conversation instead of standing around eating in silence. “Are you a friend of the gallery owners?”

The woman’s smile brightens and she extends her free hand to shake. “I’m Sawa. Takigawa Sawa. I’m a huge fan of art and one of my friends knows someone who knows someone… you know how it is.”

Her laugh is like the sound of bells. Tsukasa, who had used her police connections to get her inside the gallery, laughs along with her.

“Who’s your favorite?” she asks.

Sawa’s eyes light up. “Oh, I really love Takeji’s work, I can’t believe they actually got one of his originals in this gallery. I was dying to see one close up. Sento—my friend—got me tickets because he knows how much I wanted to see it.”

Tsukasa can’t exactly remember which one of the many paintings in the gallery was Takeji’s, but she nods. “His work is really beautiful. Have you had a chance to see it already?”

“It was the first one I went to.” Sawa’s smile turns a little mischievous, and she leans in as if to share a secret. “Did you know, I think that’s the only painting in there that’s actually a true original? Everything else has been retouched or redone, sometimes even completely remastered by someone else.”

Tsukasa blinks. “Really? But they said everything in here was a pure original…”

Sawa waves a hand. “People lie about art all the time. Or they don’t even know when they’ve got the real thing in front of them. Even museum experts and art curators can be fooled by the right set dressing.”

“But not you?” Tsukasa asks, tilting her head.

Sawa grins and picks up a glass of lemonade, swirling it around with a spoon. “Oh, I’m not an expert. I just know how museums work. I used to work at one, a long time ago.”

“And what do you do now?”

“I’m a journalist,” says Sawa simply. “I work for a newspaper—”

Tsukasa’s eyes narrow, but Sawa’s attention is cut off by a man emerging out into the hall and going to her side. He’s tall, with dark hair flopping into his forehead, wearing a red tie over his black suit, and he smiles at Sawa and then, briefly, at Tsukasa in greeting.

“Ready to go back in?” he asks her.

Sawa smiles at Tsukasa. “This is Sento, my friend I was telling you about. Sento, this is Tsukasa.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” says Sento, offering his hand to shake. “Are you a fan of art or are you just here for the free food like I am?”

Tsukasa manages a laugh. “The latter, definitely. It’s my date for the evening who’s the art aficionado. I should really go get him his drink. Nice meeting you!”

She grabs another glass of lemonade for Noel and walks away as carefully and steadily as she can manage. Her heart is thumping, whether from the adrenaline of planning the heist or from her gut intuition that she had just had a conversation with the Paper Girl, she can’t tell, but she knows it’s almost time for her thieves to make their move.

Noel is free of the two ladies he’d been chatting to when she finds him looking at a painting of the sunset and gives him his glass. The plaque under the painting reads _‘Fujishima Takeji_ ’, she realizes with a start.

“Are you alright?” Noel asks her in concern, lowering his voice in case anyone’s eavesdropping. “You look like you ran into a Gangler.”

Tsukasa finishes off her lemonade in one deep drink and whispers, “I think I met her—the Paper Girl. She’s a journalist and she was talking about how museums are easy to fool with replicas and remasters…”

“Tsukasa,” Noel says quickly before she can babble more. “Would she really be that obvious? We haven’t had any reliable sightings of her in over a month.”

“I know, but…” Tsukasa pauses to set down her glass on a waiter’s tray table and chews her lip, lost in thought. “I mean, she didn’t know I was a cop when I talked to her. So maybe she thought I was just some random girl who doesn’t know anything about art or museums.”

“Maybe… or it’s a bait and switch,” Noel points out. “She sends someone to distract you while the actual Paper Girl steals the art. And we don’t even know if she’ll be here.”

He pauses, looking around at the gaggle of people milling around the main exhibit room. “Which one did you say she was?”

Tsukasa looks around, too, searching for that pop of color or a hint of brown hair and a bunny necklace somewhere in the crowd. “She was wearing a red and blue dress, with a black blazer and…”

She takes Noel’s hand and all but drags him through the crowd to check the hallway where the refreshments are. But by now, it’s empty, only a single waiter standing there.

“We need to get in position,” Noel reminds her after a few moments of fruitless searching. “Whether she was Paper Girl or not, if we can pull off this heist, it might give Paper Girl a shock.”

Tsukasa sighs, shaking off the memory of Sawa and her secretive smiles. “You’re right. Which painting was it again?”

Noel points at the painting of a sunset he’d been admiring when she found him. “The one by Takeji. It’s an original.”

 

 

 

Their heist goes perfectly—not that she had expected anything less from Tokyo’s very own phantom thieves—and when she meets Touma behind the gallery in the shadows of the trees, he gives her the briefcase with the painting and then something else from his pocket.

“What’s this?” she asks, frowning as he pulls it out of a small cloth bag.

“It’s for you,” he says with a shrug. “Umika thought you should have one too, so she made this.”

 _This_ is a pink mask, beautifully embossed with white swirls just like their own masks. He hands it over to her and she carefully ties it around her face, settling it over her eyes. Nothing changes in her perception—she’d half-thought their masks had X-ray vision or something—but the weight of it on her face is strange, and not unpleasant. It’s like putting on sunglasses, seeing the world through the eyes of a phantom thief.

“Thank you,” Tsukasa says, genuinely touched. “But you know I’m going to give the painting back.”

Touma’s lips quirk in a half-smile. “It’s not about the endgame, Tsukasa. Sometimes, it’s just about the heist.”

With that, he takes his grappler rope and hooks himself up over the building and onto the roof, where Kairi and Umika are already waiting. Umika waves cheerfully and Kairi salutes her. Now all she has to do is get the painting into her car and then—tomorrow—hand it back to the gallery owners and let them know about the holes in their security.

The path to her car—hidden just behind the garden, away from the actual parking lot—is fairly straightforward, but as Tsukasa hefts the briefcase into her hands and begins to run through the trees, someone shoots an arrow right in front of her face.

She gasps, drawing back, as the arrow embeds itself into a tree trunk. Her instinct is to turn and examine the arrow as crime evidence, but Umika had told her: _Never look where a thief wants you to look. Always turn the opposite way. That’s where the robbery happens._

So she turns, and sees the Paper Girl jumping down from a tree. She’s still wearing that red-and-blue dress, though her black blazer is gone and so are her high heels. Her mask is different from theirs, all black with tips that curve to look like bunny ears. Her new jacket is black and white, reminiscent of newspaper clippings somehow.

“It is you,” Tsukasa murmurs. _Takigawa Sawa_ —if that had been a real name. She’ll have to investigate that. She presses the button on her bracelet that alerts Noel to her location, hoping he hurries.

“I didn’t know you’d gotten a taste for the criminal life, Officer,” says Sawa, her mouth curved in a salacious smile. “That _is_ you under there, right? It’s hard to tell with the mask in the way.”

Tsukasa clutches the briefcase tighter and reaches to make sure her gun is still hidden under her dress, within easy reach. “I’ve been looking for you for months. You’ve never been so sloppy before.”

“Oh, I know.” Sawa tilts her head, somehow lost in thought, although Tsukasa knows better than to assume she’s distracted. “I can’t explain it—I guess some part of me was hoping you’d be here. We all tend to slip up when we get emotionally involved.”

Touma had mentioned that—that she shouldn’t let her anger and frustration get in the middle of the heist, no matter what happened at the art gallery. She probably should have paid more attention to him.

“Emotionally involved?” she asks with a laugh, trying to control her breathing so she doesn’t sound more nervous than she is. “How exactly are _you_ emotionally involved?”

“Why, Detective…” Sawa’s smile is blinding as she steps closer. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been getting my notes.”

“Your notes?” Tsukasa repeats blankly. “Of course I’ve been—are you telling me you’ve been trying to get my _attention_?”

Sawa shrugs one shoulder lightly, stopping just in front of Tsukasa. She doesn’t make a move for the briefcase, doesn’t even seem to notice it’s there. When she lifts a hand to remove her mask, Tsukasa stiffens, but all she does is meet her gaze with bright eyes, a smile still playing on her lips.

“Did it work?”

Tsukasa narrows her eyes at her. “You’re not getting this painting.”

“That’s alright.” Sawa grins at her. “I’ll get it another time. I have to say, I’m impressed you did all this work just to—what, outsmart me? Prove you could do my job better than me?”

“To prove to myself,” Tsukasa finds herself saying before she can help it. Kairi had told her: _Don’t give away too much information to anyone. They don’t need to know what you’re doing or why_. But something about the look on Sawa’s face has her forgetting all their rules. “That you’re not that special.”

Sawa’s eyebrows rise as she plays with the ribbon of her mask. “And what did you find, Detective?”

“I was right,” says Tsukasa, tilting her head up stubbornly. “I could pull this off, so clearly, you can be matched. And if you can be matched, you can be outmatched.”

“Solid reasoning,” agrees Sawa. “So you have the painting in the briefcase, right?”

“You’re not getting it.”

“Oh, I know that.” Sawa smirks. “Why don’t you check to make sure it’s still in there?”

Tsukasa glances down at the briefcase, sudden anxiety seizing her. “Why would I do that?”

“No reason,” says Sawa airily. She leans closer and Tsukasa can see every eyelash fluttering, the red gloss on her lips, can smell the light pear-scented perfume she must be wearing. “But if it’s not there when you get home, you know who to blame.”

“If it’s not there when I get home, I’m going to hunt you down, _Sawa_ ,” says Tsukasa, but her fierceness is undercut by the feeling of her heart pounding in her ribcage. “You shouldn’t have given me a name.”

“You’re right,” says Sawa, exhaling a sigh. “Beginner’s mistake, isn’t it? Meet a pretty girl, tell her too much information, end up in jail. Sento warned me the second he saw you not to get caught up in the chase.”

Tsukasa pauses, her breathing suddenly uneven. “And?”

“Lucky you,” Sawa smiles. “I don’t listen to him.”

Before Tsukasa can stop her, she’s bridged the gap between them. Her kiss is surprisingly sweet, and surprisingly warm, her mouth gentle as she presses into Tsukasa, doesn’t even touch her with anything else except her lips. She doesn’t want to respond, doesn’t want to kiss her back—but her mouth opens and it’s like there are tendrils of heat seeping into her body.

Tsukasa keeps her fingers curled tight around the briefcase, but when Sawa pulls back, she still hasn’t made any move for it.

“See you next time, Detective,” she says, drawing her mask back on. “Good job with the heist, by the way.”

“I don’t need your compliments,” Tsukasa mutters, but Sawa only laughs before she touches her bunny necklace and suddenly vanishes in a cloud of grey smoke, leaving Tsukasa staring at the place she had been standing only a moment ago.

 _So that’s how she does that…_ Was it science? Magic? A long-lost piece of the Lupin collection?

“Tsukasa!” calls Noel, his suit glittering as he runs into the garden. “Are you alright? I couldn’t get away from the owners, they kept trying to make me give testimony even though I told them I was already a cop and I could—”

He stops as she sits down on the ground and unlocks the briefcase, her hands shaking just a little. The painting is still inside there, as real and incandescent in the sunlight as it had been inside the gallery.

“Are you okay?” Noel asks again. “Should I call the others?”

Tsukasa shakes her head and, despite herself, laughs out loud. “No. I’ll give this back tomorrow.”

Noel looks at her uncertainly as she traces a hand over the painting—for once, it doesn’t start running colors in the signature style of the Paper Girl. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” Tsukasa snaps the briefcase shut but continues sitting there, imagining a very different phantom thief standing where Noel is. He offers her a hand to help her up and she rises to her feet with a genuine smile on her face, lifting her hand to adjust her pink mask. “I know how to catch her now.”

Somehow, though, she doesn’t think that’s really the endgame here. Maybe the Paper Girl subscribes to Touma’s philosophy— _sometimes, it’s just about the heist_.


End file.
